1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a system and method for applying funds to savings products and/or investment products, and more particularly, to a system and method for using a transaction card billing system to allow cardholders to make predetermined savings on a regular basis and/or investment contributions to multiple investment products on a regular basis.
2. Related Art
An increasing number of people are saving their money in a deposit account (e.g., a savings account, checking account, money market account, etc.) and/or investing their money in a variety of investment products. For many of these people, a prudent savings and/or investment strategy is to fund their deposit account and/or investment products, such as annuities, mutual funds, brokerage accounts, CDs, insurance, certificates, equities and the like, on a regular basis. However, even if people send a check to fund a deposit account and/or an investment product, the remittance process is typically time consuming and people often lack the discipline required to fund their deposit accounts and/or investment accounts on a regular basis. Moreover, people already typically write numerous checks each month to pay for transaction cards, utilities, investment products and other recurring expenses.
Due to the inefficiencies associated with numerous required remittances, people desire to avoid the hassles of multiple payments each month to various entities. Accordingly, a system which combines payments owed to selected entities and which relieves the consumer of the burden of having to proactively deposit separate savings and/or investment funds each month is needed.
Thus, a system which conveniently combines transaction card payments with savings and/or investment product payments would help to solve some of the existing remittance problems and satisfy unmet consumer needs. The combined system would also provide substantial benefits to savings institutions (e.g., banks, credit unions, etc.) and/or the investment product brokers by increasing the percentage of cardholders who save money with the institution and/or purchase investment products. Furthermore, the combination of transaction card payments and investment product payments would benefit broker by allowing the broker to analyze the cardholder investment decision-making process and suggest other investment options to the cardholder.
With respect to transaction cards, an increasing number of people use transaction cards each month, such as credit cards, charge cards, debit cards and the like, wherein the cards are primarily designed as a method of payment, a bill paying mechanism, or a means of financing the purchases of goods and services. Therefore, with respect to implementation of a combined system, most transaction card companies have already developed efficient billing and remittance systems, so supplementing the existing billing systems with deposit account and/or investment product billing and allocation functionality would most likely be a relatively modest software and hardware investment.